Rebuilding data on a dispersed storage network

Abstract

A rebuilder application operates on a dispersed data storage grid and rebuilds stored data segments that have been compromised in some manner. The rebuilder application actively scans for compromised data segments, and is also notified during partially failed writes to the dispersed data storage network, and during reads from the dispersed data storage network when a data slice is detected that is compromised. Records are created for compromised data segments, and put into a rebuild list, which the rebuilder application processes.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 403,391, entitled “SYSTEM FOR REBUILDING DISPERSED DATA,” filed Apr. 13, 2006, which is a continuation in part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 241,555, entitled “DIGITAL DATA STORAGE SYSTEM,” filed Sep. 30, 2005, and this application is also a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 973,542, entitled “ENSURING DATA INTEGRITY ON A DISPERSED STORAGE GRID,” filed Oct. 9, 2007, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to systems, apparatus, and methods for distributed data storage, and more particularly to systems, apparatus, and methods for distributed data storage using an information dispersal algorithm so that no one location will store an entire copy of stored data, and more particularly still to systems, apparatus, and methods for reb...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0021]A second embodiment of the disclosed invention operates as a method of dealing with partially failed writes to a dispersed data storage network. In this embodiment, a data segment is sliced into m data slices, but only t of these data slices are successfully written during the initial write transaction, whe

Problems solved by technology

A data slice is compromised if it is, for example, outdated, corrupted, or missing, i.e., inherently not accessible by a slice server that is supposed to be storing it.

A data segment becomes compromised when one or more data slices associated with the data segment become compromised.

It cannot be read or rebuilt only if too many data slices become compromised.

If the integrity check fails, the status data will indicate that the data slice stored by the slice server is corrupted.

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